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Published: June 10th 2008
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The missus
Out in the desert Dubai, we’ve decided, is a must see destination.
The amount of construction going on here is beyond description. By the time they finish what they have set out to do here, in about 10 years, it would be safe to say they will have built more buildings and infrastructure in 20 years than Melbourne (Greater Melbourne) has built in 150+ years.
In 1983 they had 20000 tourists pass through, last year they topped 6 MILLION. By 2010 they anticipate 16 MILLION! There are hundreds of hotels, hundreds of 50 storey + office buildings and dozens of ‘world’s biggest’ everything.
They have - the world’s tallest building (and it’s not finished yet)
- the worlds largest mall will be finished this year
- they are building the worlds longest canal
- they are building the largest man made structures - the palm islands and ‘The world’ islands.
- They have already finished the stations underground for a railway system. (Not the tracks yet, but they wont take long.) Until now, they haven’t needed one, but now that they do - All brand new in one go, undergraound and above, with 53 stations within an area 30 X 30km.
-
Burj Dubai
Behind some 'little' buildings that are about as tall as the Rialto. They open the world’s largest theme park in 2010 - 6 times bigger than Disneyworld.
- They are MAKING “The most coastline’ by creating islands off the shore and lakes inland. They’ve already gone from 65km of coast to over 1000, and are really just starting.
I’m a sucker for stats, and this place is paradise for me 😊
After arriving at the airport, we were ‘meeted and greeted’, which was a breathe of fresh air, and got to the hotel no worries.
Yesterday we met our ‘liaison after brekky and booked a couple of touristy things. First was a ‘Dune Safari/dinner’ last night, which wasn’t for 6 hours, so we went and got some clothes for Kerryn for the trip the next day, and had some Macca’s (Couldn’t help ourselves!)
Did I mention it was HOT here and HUMID!!!!!! It was about 37C when we arrived at 11pm at night, and this time of year runs at about 70% humidity. Next month it’s 45 - 50C and 90-100% humidity.
Even as it is at the moment, the heat haze and moisture in the air restricts visibility to about 1km.
The Dinner safari was
Dubai Land
A model of the 15km X 15km theme park incredible. We got picked up from the hotel, drove out to the desert, met up with the rest of the convoy (3 convoys of 20 odd 4WDs actually) and then went dune bashing. It wasn’t quite as wild as I thought it would be, but more wild than Kerryn thought, so it was probably just right. With a few stops on the way to get drinks, watch the sunset etc, we rotated seats to give everyone a go and got to the Bedouin camp just on dark.
Here we had camel rides, sand artistry, Henna body painting, traditional Arab foods and drinks, all as part of the day - it was awesome.
Bloody Kerryn got me singled out to go up on the ‘stage’ with some others as part of the ‘Belly Dancers’ show, but all in all, it was great. Got home and had a very good nights sleep.
This morning we were up a bit earlier to do a full day tour around the city areas of Dubai.
We got bussed about to The Burj Dubai - the 1km square area with the worlds tallest building and largest mall, then headed out to where
7 star hotel
Where we had 'High Tea' today they are constructing the world's largest theme park. At both sites we went into the 'sales' buildings, where they have architectural models of the finished product - these joints are going to be mind blowing.
Kerryn and I have already promised ourselves we will be back here in 10 years to see how it all turns out. We'll need a fortnight minimum by then to be able to see a decent amount of it.
After 'DubaiLand' we drove out the 'trunk' of the first of the 3 huge Palm tree islands/towns they are building, then went along the coast through various areas until the got to the Burj Al Arab (I think it's called - it's the famous 7 star hotel you see in all the photo's for Dubai - with the Heli pad up top).
We were dropped on the mainland by the coach, and ferried across the bridge onto the man made island they plonked it on in golf carts, so that we could go in and have 'High Tea' on the Mezzanine restaurant. Holy crap - what a place. Half of it is literally plated in gold, there was nearly one staff member per person, and everything was spotless, fresh and perfect. We started off with a bottle of Moet to share at our table of 4, then continued on with about 8 courses of nibbles, Tea and Coffee for about 2 hours. After that we got some pics and vids of the lobby etc, and buggied it back over to the mainland to meet the coach again.
From the brochure I seem to remember that rooms here START at $1600 PER NIGHT - so we probably won't be going back in a hurry, but it's cool to be able to say we've dined at the world's only 7 star hotel 😊
We then went on to a (more upmarket?/modern?) Souk (market) nearby, where we checked out the stalls/shops for a little while.
We've met a couple of really nice couples in our tours here, including Sandra and Eddie (I may be wring with Eddie's name - I'm bloody hopeless with names!!) from Nowra in NSW.
Tomorrow, we're going to the 'Old' Gold Souk, to check out the gold and jewelry, before we head off to the 'Mall of the Emirates' for some indoor (!?!?!!!!) snowboarding - no - seriously!
I probably won't get any pics up 'til tomorrow, as the wireless here is really (REALLY) slow.
Caio for now.
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